Posts Tagged ‘Beidou’

China on Tuesday began offering its own satellite navigation system to users, as an effort to move away from the nation’s reliance on the U.S.-built NAVSTAR GPS network.
Beidou now offered location, timing and navigation data to China and surrounding areasannounced the project’s spokesman Ran Cheng. China has been working on the system since 2000 to provide an alternative to the US government-run Global Positioning System (GPS). The move should make China’s military less dependent on foreign technology. A launch earlier this month delivered the tenth of Beidou’s satellites into orbit.
Beijing plans to send a further six satellites into space by 2012 to extend the sy